In the Zone: Seventh Circuit Rejects Challenge to Local Sign Regulations
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued an opinion upholding municipal sign regulations against a First Amendment challenge brought by a billboard company. GEFT Outdoor, LLC v. City of Evansville, Indiana.
A City in Indiana had enacted sign regulations that distinguish between on-premises signs and off-premises signs. In a lawsuit that spanned several years and included various arguments under the First Amendment, these regulations were challenged by a billboard company on various grounds, including that: (1) the distinction between on- and off-premises signs in the City's sign code was an unconstitutional content-based classification; (2) the City’s criteria for reviewing variance requests were likely to take content into consideration in violation of the First Amendment; and (3) the sign code impermissibly exempts certain categories of non-commercial messages for preferential treatment.
The first challenge, based on the distinction between on- and off-premises signs, was successful in the district court. However, the Seventh Circuit ultimately vacated that decision after the Supreme Court issued its opinion in City of Austin v. Reagan, determining that distinctions between on- and off-premises signs are not unconstitutional content-based discrimination.
The second challenge to the City’s variance procedures was rejected by the district court, which found that the sign code’s criteria for variances did not include a review of the proposed sign’s content. Additionally, the District Court determined that the City’s sign code was sufficiently specific to avoid a First Amendment violation. The Seventh Circuit noted that its recent decision in GEFT Outdoor, LLC v. Monroe County all but foreclosed the billboard company’s arguments, since near-identical variance criteria were upheld against a similar challenge in that case.
In its third challenge, the billboard company attempted to argue that the City was clearly considering content in its sign ordinance, since certain regulations did not apply to political signs and signs with other non-commercial messages. The Seventh Circuit noted that, in order to succeed on this claim, the billboard company had to show that the regulations were unconstitutional on their face, meaning that the ordinance (or at least a substantial portion of the ordinance) was unconstitutional in any case, regardless of its application or enforcement. The Seventh Circuit again ruled against the billboard company, finding that it failed to argue that a substantial portion of the ordinance was unconstitutional. Instead, it had focused its claim on the specific application of the variance criteria to its request, effectively conceding that the bulk of the sign regulations were valid.
Ultimately, the Seventh Circuit ruled that the billboard company had failed to show that the City unlawfully considered the content of its proposed off-premise sign in rejecting its request for a variance.
Post Authored by Erin Monforti & Julie Tappendorf, Ancel Glink
0 comments:
Post a Comment